Feast of Strangers
Selected Prose and Poetry of Reuel Denney
Published on 30. May 1999
Book
Hardback
272 pages
978-0-313-30085-1 (ISBN)
Description
Poet, social scientist, and literary essayist, Reuel Denney is best known perhaps as co-author of The Lonely Crowd with David Riesman and Nathan Glaser. These selected essays and poems, edited by Tony Quagliano, span a wide range of topics and more than a half century of American cultural history.
The topics range from international finance to leisure, from Greek mythology to Disney, from American poetry to the great oral tradition of Polynesian poetry. Woven throughout is Denney's fascinating memoir Experience in the World, an autobiographical meditation on America in the twentieth century. This unique collection presents one poet and scholar's encounter with the complexities of American life. American culture, Denney shows us, is the product of the many cultures of the world; it is indeed a Feast of Strangers. This is a work for scholars, students, and other researchers of American literature and culture studies.
The topics range from international finance to leisure, from Greek mythology to Disney, from American poetry to the great oral tradition of Polynesian poetry. Woven throughout is Denney's fascinating memoir Experience in the World, an autobiographical meditation on America in the twentieth century. This unique collection presents one poet and scholar's encounter with the complexities of American life. American culture, Denney shows us, is the product of the many cultures of the world; it is indeed a Feast of Strangers. This is a work for scholars, students, and other researchers of American literature and culture studies.
More details
Language
English
Place of publication
United States
Publishing group
Bloomsbury Publishing Plc
Target group
College/higher education
Professional and scholarly
Dimensions
Height: 235 mm
Width: 157 mm
Thickness: 21 mm
Weight
596 gr
ISBN-13
978-0-313-30085-1 (9780313300851)
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Schweitzer Classification
Persons
REUEL DENNEY was one of the leading analysts of American culture, a scholar, author, teacher, journalist, and poet. His first collection of poetry The Connecticut River and Other Poems won the Yale Younger Poets Award in 1939. The author of numerous studies of American culture, including The Astonished Muse, he may be best known as a co-author, with David Riesman and Nathan Glazer, of The Lonely Crowd. He taught at the University of Chicago and the University of Hawaii. He was at work on this collection at the time of his death in 1995.
TONY QUAGLIANO is Professor of American Culture and Society at the Japan-America Institute in Honolulu. A widely published poet and essayist whose works have appeared in New Directions and Rolling Stone, he is a contributing editor to the annual anthology The Pushcart Prize-Best of the Small Presses and is editor of KAIMANA (Diamond), the journal of the Hawaii Literary Arts Council.
TONY QUAGLIANO is Professor of American Culture and Society at the Japan-America Institute in Honolulu. A widely published poet and essayist whose works have appeared in New Directions and Rolling Stone, he is a contributing editor to the annual anthology The Pushcart Prize-Best of the Small Presses and is editor of KAIMANA (Diamond), the journal of the Hawaii Literary Arts Council.
Content
Foreword by David Riesman Editor's Introduction by Tony Quagliano Experience in the World 1913-1947 Household Words A Little Learning For My Girl's Birthday Shuttle Island--Largo McSorley's Bar Excerpt from The Portfolio of Benjamin Latrobe--"When Spelling Bees" The Invisible Hand The Battle of Bretton Woods The Leisure Society Excerpt from The Portfolio of Benjamin Latrobe--"My Grandfather" Experience in the World 1947-1961 It's a Wonderful Town "Wind in the Sycamore" "A Requiem" "To an Old Friend" Feast of Strangers Feast of Strangers: Varieties of Sociable Experience in America What the Animals Are Saying about Us A Tale of Two Studios: Artist Jean Charlot in Walt Disney's Atelier "Ravenna" "A Wine For Li Po's Picture" Excerpt from The Portfolio of Benjamin Latrobe--"Here at Stairways Experience in the World 1961-1995 Excerpt From "The Animal Cartel" West Modernity and Myth William Carlos Williams A Portable Pagoda: Asia and America in the Work of Gary Snyder Merwin and Myth Hawaiian Heritage Birdman, Myth, and Technology "The Laboratory Midnight" "Portrait of the Old Poet as a Used Car" "Pele Poem" Excerpt from The Portfolio of Benjamin Latrobe--"I Dedicate to Benjamin Henry Latrobe" Works by Reuel Denney Index